As Coordinator of the Childproofing Our Communities Campaign, a nationwide coalition of over two hundred groups concerned with children’s exposures to toxins in their environments, I am writing to express my concerns with the Draft Report on PVC as submitted by the US Green Building Council’s Technical Scientific Advisory Committee.
The production and disposal of PVC products creates dioxin as a byproduct, which is highly toxic and builds up in the food chain. Dioxins are known to cause cancer, reproductive, developmental and immune problems. For these reasons and so many others, the leader in the field for green building design should be on the forefront of the call to phase out PVC and reduce our exposures to dioxin. Of particular concern is the risk of dioxin to the special health vulnerabilities of children, and the compounding effects of chemicals to their growing bodies.
Children are a unique population; because their organ systems are still developing, children absorb, metabolize, detoxify and excrete poisons differently from adults. As structures and vital connections develop during these critical years, body systems are not suited to repair damage caused by toxins, therefore damage and dysfunction from chemical exposures is likely permanent and irreversible. Worse, children are born into an uneven playing field, as most mothers now carry, and pass along to their babies, high levels of dioxin in their breast milk.
We urge the TSAC to consider the role the USGBC plays in moving the environmental movement into mainstream offices, schools and homes, and thereby the power that it holds over shifting the market towards increasingly innovative and healthier alternatives for building supplies.
As an organizer around children’s environmental health issues, I educate and empower individuals not yet engaged in the complex issues of building materials, chemicals and politics. The overarching goal of our work is to increase the number of communities educated about children’s environmental health issues. Building this strong and active base will increase the demand for LEED certified buildings, and move the public in the direction of green building design. However, a ‘neutral’ stance of the TSAC on PVC, in light of the mounting evidence of the many risks posed by PVC production and disposal to our health and the environment, will greatly compromise how environmentalists and health activists view the integrity of LEED accreditation.
I trust that the fundamental vision of the LEED program and the USGBC is to improve the way that we do business, to inject creativity and innovation into the accepted norms for new construction and retrofits, and to support for construction and material evolution that does no harm to building occupants, builders and future generations.
We are concerned that the TSAC Report as written will undermine our efforts and those of other organizations to move priority toxic chemicals out of use. We urge the U.S. Green Building Council to stand with the growing movement of organizations, consumers, and companies who have recognized the lifecycle hazards created by PVC.
We hope you will carefully consider these comments as you continue to deliberate your decision of whether to provide accreditation for PVC building materials. |